Science and Religion 1 – Origin and Evolution of the Universe

This is the text for lessons in the Science and Religion Adult Sunday School series at St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church in Chapin, SC, April 6-May 18, 2008

Religious Notes

Genesis 1:1-2:3, Moses tells the story of Creation. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.

Day 1 Light

Day 2 Sky and Water

Day 3 Land and Seas

Day 4 Sun, Moon and Stars

Day 5 Fish and Birds

Day 6 Animals, including Humans

Day 7 Rest

Exodus 20:11 – “In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them…”

Psalms 8:3 – “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,”

Psalms 19:1 – The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork.

Psalms 19:4 – Their line has gone out through all the earth, And their words to the end of the world. In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun,

Isaiah 42:5 – “This is what God the Lord says – he who created the heavens and stretched them out…”

Hebrews 11:3 – “For by faith we know that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”

Colossians 1:11-20 “for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible…”

Prayers of the People for Lent – “At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.”

Science Text

Historical Background – Our concept of the Universe has changed with time. The changing concept occurred as the needs for human survival were met and technologies for investigating conditions beyond the Earth were developed.

Early Observations (3)

Ca. 10,000 BC – humans first began to cultivate crops and domesticate animals systematically; early agriculture-based civilizations observed the cycle of the seasons and kept records of celestial events.

3,000 BC, a Mesopotamian calendar had been developed that was based on records and observations of solar and lunar cycles

Ca. 1,400 BC, the Egyptians were also able to determine the beginning of the seasons by the positions of celestial objects.

Geocentric Models (4)

For many years, the Earth was considered to be stationary in space and probably flat.

540-510 BC – Pythagoras proposed that the Earth was a sphere, probably based on his recognition that the Moon was spherical. Like most other scholars of the day, Pythagoras considered the Earth to be the center of the Universe.

384-322 BC – Aristotle modified the Pythagorean idea and considered the Earth to be the center of a spherical, finite Universe. His idea was that the Moon, Sun, planets, and stars were confined to spherical shells that revolved at variable rates around the Earth.

310?-230? BC – Aristarchus proposed that the Sun was more distant from the Earth than the Moon; proposed that the spherical Earth orbited the Sun. This concept, however, would not be widely accepted for 2,000 years.

276?-192? BC – Eratosthenes assembled a catalog that listed the 675 brightest stars. He also accurately measured the 23.5° inclination of the Earth’s axis that is responsible for Earth’s seasons. In addition, he calculated the circumference of the Earth within approximately 20% of the correct value.

In the 100’s AD – Claudius Ptolemy further developed the Earth-centered ideas of Aristotle and Hipparchus.

Heliocentric Models (5,6)

1473-1543 – Nicolas Copernicus proposed that all planets revolved around the Sun in circular orbits. He also proposed that the Solar System was small when compared with the size of the Universe. He purposely delayed publication of this book to avoid retribution by the Church.

1571-1630 – Johannes Kepler found that planets revolve around the Sun in elliptical orbits, with the Sun at one focus of the ellipse.

1642-1727 – Sir Isaac Newton provided the theoretical framework for the heliocentric view of the Solar System with his law of universal gravitation, which said that the only force needed to keep the planets moving around the Sun, is gravity.

Evidence based on Telescopes (7)

1564-1642 – Galileo Galilei was the first to use a telescope to study the planets and stars systematically. He discovered the existence of moons in orbit around Jupiter. He also discovered that Venus exhibited phases like the Moon, proving that Venus’s orbit lies between Earth and the Sun. Galileo also detected stars in Milky Way. Galileo’s observations supported the heliocentric model of the Solar System and refuted the Earth-centered Universe model. In 1616, the Church condemned the Copernican theory as heretical, contrary to Scripture. Galileo published his views and as a result, was called before the Inquisition, tried, convicted and sentenced to permanent house arrest. The Church did not exonerate Galileo until 1992.

Mid-1700s – Immanuel Kant correctly proposed that fuzzy patches of light that could be seen with a telescope were actually other distant galaxies filled with stars like our Sun.

1920s – Edwin Hubble detected individual stars within these patches of light, verifying Kant’s original idea that these were in fact galaxies of stars.

Evidence that the Universe is expanding

The idea that the Universe is expanding has been derived primarily from observations that galaxies in the Universe are moving away from each other at velocities proportional to the distance between them. To understand this better, it is necessary to understand how astronomers measure the velocities at which galaxies are moving and the distances between galaxies.

Movement of Galaxies in the Universe – Properties of Light (8)

To understand how we know that galaxies are moving relative to one another, we have to know something about the wave properties of light. Light has properties of both waves and particles. Wave properties include wavelength, amplitude and frequency. Of particular interest to this lesson are the wavelengths of light. Visible light occupies only a minute part of what is known as the electromagnetic spectrum. Red light has the longest wavelength and lowest frequency, followed in order by orange, yellow, green, indigo and violet with the shortest wavelength and highest frequency.

Doppler Effect (9)

Next we must introduce another property of light, but it is probably easiest to introduce first a sound wave analogy. Imagine that a locomotive is moving toward you with its whistle blowing. As the train approaches you, the sound of the whistle not only gets louder, its pitch becomes higher. As the train moves away from you, the whistle gets weaker and its pitch becomes lower. The sound waves are being compressed as the train moves toward you and are being dilated as the train moves away. A similar phenomenon occurs with light waves. With light the wave lengths being emitted by an object moving toward you become compressed. In the visible spectrum, that means the light wave lengths are shifted toward the blue end of the spectrum. Light waves emitted by an object moving away from you are dilated and wave lengths are shifter toward the red end of the visible spectrum.

Light emitted by any excited chemical element, the source of light from stars, has a unique pattern of characteristic wave lengths. It has been found that light from distant galaxies is routinely shifted toward the red end of the visible spectrum, indicating that all galaxies first are moving, and second that they are all moving away from us.

It is also possible to determine the velocity at which stars and galaxies are moving progressively farther from our galaxy (bottom to top) are shown. American astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the velocity at which a star galaxy is moving away from the Earth is proportional to its distance from the Earth. With this information, we can retro-project the galaxies back to a common point at a specific time in the past. This point in time is then considered to be the origin of the Universe. That point in time was about 15 billion years ago. It was at that time that all matter in the Universe was concentrated into a very dense, small volume of space.

At about 15 billion years ago, that small volume of all matter exploded sending all matter into space during what is now known as the Big Bang. The Universe began expanding at that time and is still expanding.

Life history of stars (10)

Stars are not permanent features. All stars go through a life history that includes birth, growth and death. Stars are formed when gravity overcomes the blast of the Big Bang and pieces of matter begin coalescing. Stars grow as more matter is accreted. Most of that matter is hydrogen atoms, which, as the star grows, begins fusing with other hydrogen atoms forming progressively heavier atoms. As this fusion takes place much energy is given off, some of it in the form of light that we see. Stars eventually die, after they reach a point where fusion can no longer take place. The process by which stars die is dependent upon the size of the star. Stars much larger than our Sun die through a supernova explosion.

Reflective Questions, with Answers

1. Does the word “day”, as used in the Old Testament, have only one meaning?

• No, in Genesis 1:5, “God called the light “day” and the darkness he called night.”
• In Genesis 1:14, the word “day” refers to the 24 hour period.
• In Genesis 2:4, the word “day” refers to the whole Creative Week.
• In Psalm 90:4, “For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has gone by…”

2. What is the fundamental difference between the Genesis version of the origin of the Universe and that of science?

The Bible tells who and why the Universe was created; science tells us how and when it happened.

3.Does the Bible teach science?

No, we Episcopalians believe that the Bible “contains all things necessary for salvation” – BCP

The Bible, including Genesis, is not a divinely dictated textbook. We discover scientific knowledge about the Creation through observations of and data about nature.

4. How do we treat concepts in the Bible that appear to be scientific?

God inspired the ancient writers to describe the world in concepts and language they and their audiences could understand at the time, not in the concepts and language of our times and not using scientific knowledge that had yet to be discovered.

5. Does the Big Bang cosmology conflict with theology?

No, the Big Bang cosmology seems to be in tune with both the concept of “creation out of nothing” and the concept of “continuous creation”.